


Supersoaker

by TrantRazber



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, CN smoking, Gabriel Reyes is a super cool SEP soldier, Indiana 'farm' boy!Jack Morrison, Jack Morrison has never felt so gay and he is ... shook, Jack Morrison wonders what it means to be patriotic, M/M, Mostly cute fluff, SEP soldier boy on leave!Gabriel Reyes, This is an AU, also there's a cow, animals like Gabriel Reyes, fourth of July theme, i am trash for writing this before i finish my other fic and i'm sorry, moira o'deorain wants your lungs, plz enjoy the fluff, yes I do make a "tactical advantage" joke in every jack fic why do you ask, yes there is a dog in this fic why do you ask, young Jack Morrison is a weird kid who was raised by his grandparents basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-05 03:09:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15161201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrantRazber/pseuds/TrantRazber
Summary: In which a young Jack Morrison on the edge of adulthood has a crucial run-in with a similarly aged Gabriel Reyes who has come to Bloomington, Indiana in the middle of a sticky-sweet summer with the SEP program for a few days leading up to and immediately after the fourth of July. Jack learns more about himself and the world in less than a week than he has in a lifetime. He ponders the big questions: what does it mean to be patriotic in this country? What am I doing with my future? Why am I so gay for this guy I've only just met and what am I going to do about it?





	1. Boom

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO FRIENDS. I am so excited about this fic...... it's an AU I've been thinking about for a long time and every time I hear "Supersoaker" by Kings of Leon i start waxing poetic about summertime/fourth of July time in small communities and i just couldn't stop thinking about these two. I'm not sure how long this is going to turn out, probably not too super long since it takes place over the course of approximately six days, but I hope you'll stick around for this little sweet summertime fling that's going to fall into Jack's lap and shake up his whole world. This first chapter is just a short little prologue to get you in the mood :^)

            When it’s hot on a dry summer day in Bloomington, Indiana, you can be sure it will be hot still come nighttime. All that sun which the dirt and asphalt soak up during the day comes oozing up by sundown, rising out of the ground in invisible waves to return to the sky. Jack Morrison is eighteen and lying on his back in bed on a dry summer night. He is in his childhood-turned-adolescent bedroom in a rural home out by the city limits, watching the cobwebs on the ceiling.

            _Boom! Crack! Screech!_

            It is June thirty-first, and already he is hearing errant fireworks sounding off now and then through the open window over his head. He is laying on his back, waiting for the next flush of coming night air to rush over him; the cold breeze on his skin is like breathing in thankful gasps after being choked by the heat of the day. There is a fan next to him on his bedside table, the same bedside table he’s had since he can remember having one at all, and the silver oscillating fan blows blonde bangs in his eyes over and over and over again. Outside in the grass, the chirps of crickets have resumed in groups and frogs are calling back and forth in throaty voices.

            Already it has been over a month since he graduated high school, and he has the ghost of a helium balloon in his room marked “Congrats GRAD!” to prove it. The balloon bumps idly around his low ceiling in the dying light of the day like a lurking butler always just in the corner of his vision. Streaks of gold light thrown through his window bathe his off-white walls, his shining track team trophies, the scratches on sides of his off-white dresser where he carved his name once upon a childhood summer like this one, the diploma on his desk already framed and gathering dust.

            _Boom!_

            Another firework goes off and Jack is not surprised; he doesn’t blink or shift his hands from where they are resting on his stomach. These fireworks, they happen for the week leading up to the fourth, and usually again for another week after that. Bloomington has always loved their fireworks so long as Jack can remember, and with growing talk of violent omnic activity across the world, people are clinging to tradition – _all tradition_ – and this one harder than ever. The crickets have gone silent.

            _Crack!_

            The summer air is sweet and heavy and fills Jack’s head with grateful, weighted silence for the first time since May. There are questions within him, new ones that will demand answers sooner or later, but the thick heat of summer has muffled them to a low buzzing. It is hard to think of the future when the present is so real, beating down on you in a way you can measure with numbers on a heat index. If the numbers are high enough, no one blames you for much of anything, least of all for doing nothing. Outside in the grass, the frogs cease their call-and-response. The fan whirs on, creaking and sputtering as it turns one way and then stutters back the other.

            _Screech!_

            This is first summer of his adulthood and he feels just the same as ever. This is the first summer that doesn’t necessarily have school waiting on the other side. It is wide open save for the expectation to enroll in the local university looming over his head like a countdown clock that's been counting down since the moment he got his high school diploma and Jack, Jack just rolls over onto his side, sticks his face in the wind from the fan and lets the air blow his hair back, except for where it sticks to his temples in sweat. He closes his eyes, and he thinks of anything except the future. Outside the moon hangs low in the sky, and is climbing ever higher.


	2. Sweet Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack counters a moment of FOMO with some big feelings about the new soldiers in town, and learns the name of the soldier who has unexpectedly shown up at his house and all without asking permission from Jack even ONCE!

Jack hasn’t thought about soldiers – about _individual_ soldiers – very much before the SEP recruits roll through town the morning of the first day of the first July of his eighteenth summer. Sure, when he was young he had played with toy versions of them: miniaturized fighters fighting miniaturized battles, living and dying according to Jack’s whims of morality that day. But he hadn’t given them names – hell, they didn’t even have faces, really, just featureless bumps and grooves where a face would be and all the same army green color as their helmet, their boots, their undefined plastic guns. Even when the omnics started shooting on the news he didn’t think of them.

He wakes to the sounds of screaming jet engines overhead, loud and whooshing and gone almost as soon as Jack understands what they are. There is no need to look at the clock; these days Jack can tell the time by the heat. It’s warm and growing warmer, but not bad enough to have forced him into movement before now. It’s the jet engines that do that.

Curiosity moves him more than anything, moves him to pull yesterday’s t-shirt over yesterday’s undershirt. He is tripping over himself at the thought of the unknown; the suggestion that something is happening outside without him is enough to have him hopping one-legged down the stairs into a pair of jeans older than some of the family photos that hang on the wall. He expects to find his grandparents, at least one of them, somewhere in the house but this is wishful thinking and the reality is of course that he is the last out the door, the last down the street, the last to know.

Head back and eyes on the sky, Jack follows the white trails left behind from the jet pilots but he can see the crowd from a good two blocks away on either side of the street. This far out of town, not much happens outside of the slow and steady growth of the corn stalks year after year. Jack has never had much interest in animal husbandry, and he can’t say that changed after watching his neighbor’s cow give birth last year just because he noticed she was doing it, but it _had_ been something to do nevertheless.

Spotting his grandparents off to one side, Jack weaves his way through mostly familiar faces and makes the quick decision not to join up with grandma and grandpa. To his grandma he gives a tiny wave, an acknowledgment that he’s seen her and choosing not to go over. His grandpa is too distracted by the scene in the cleared street to notice him, the one that Jack has been stealing glimpses of between shoulders beating in the sun.

There are three neat rows of very neat looking soldiers in long-sleeved black uniforms Jack doesn’t recognize, marching down the street in rank and file. They are being lead by a woman in a uniform that would be identical to the others if not for the blue trim, and her kind face, and the way she is waving here and there at children and adults. Her smile sticks out all the more against the backdrop of hard-lipped soldiers behind her. For all their flash and fire, for how put together they are, Jack can’t help it that his first thought is how they must be _cooking_ in those clothes.

When the pangs of heat empathy clear, however, Jack is reminded for the first time in a long time about his little green soldiers. About how different they looked than these people. About how his grandpa had played with them alongside him but could only stare at these ones, about how the faces of these soldiers look so _real_ – Jack can pick out beads of sweat on a brow, the strained look of trying to appear expressionless or maybe the point is something else that Jack just can’t get.

One in particular stands out to him: a head of black hair catching in the sun and marching ever forward just behind the woman who seems to outrank the rest of them. The jet pilots overhead make another pass down the street and Jack’s ears ring from the sounds of the engines but he doesn’t look up; he is watching this boy – no, the soldier couldn’t be called that – he is watching this _man_ watching nothing and in a way it is almost embarrassing to be so brazen.

Jack has been raised not to stare, as most folks are, but here it’s like _that’s the_ _point_ and so he can’t stop himself and stops trying instead. He notes that they aren’t carrying weapons and he feels relief, then wonders if that relief is why they aren’t carrying them, and the conundrum locks up in his stomach.

“Who are they?” Jack asks, to no one in particular.

“Some kinda new unit. Special program, I heard,” answers no one in particular who is likely to have as much authority on it as anyone else Jack knows so he shuts up about it.

The whole thing takes maybe fifteen minutes or so, and then the soldiers are around the corner and presumably onto their own thing. Jack could follow them, the way a few people are (mostly folks Jack can recognize as veterans, and a few young children, he notices) but once the procession has gone by it feels strange to follow – impolite maybe.

He lingers on the sidewalk for a while with the temperature rising and his forehead growing slick, the weight of an unplanned summer day heavy overhead. He’s got some summer work lined up, but today there’s just nothing except time to kill, and so he drifts through the back roads that he knows by heart, his own scenic route filled with familiar landmarks that are really just rotting fence posts or aging horses out to pasture that he can always count on to be there.

When he starts up the dusty hill to home, which is an old farmhouse that once upon a time used to be home to real live farmers instead of an elderly couple and the grandson that circumstance forced them to raise together, he is surprised to see his grandma’s car parked not inside the carport but rather pulled up to the steps of the front porch.

As he approaches he can hear her voice from inside the house calling to someone other than him, can’t be him, because he’s only just here and she knew that he was out. She’s old but not that old. One of the vehicle’s back doors is open and from out behind it steps a figure in a newly-familiar all-black uniform.

The first thing Jack notices about SEP soldier Gabriel Reyes – like, really, _really_ notices – are his honey-brown eyes and the way they are distinctly not looking back at him at all. The second thing he notices is the way that SEP soldier Gabriel Reyes Is holding _two bags of groceries in each arm_ and these are not half-empty bags. These are the sorts of overflowing bags of groceries that elderly folks who can’t make it out to the store very often bring home, and the soldier is holding them with relative ease considering the heat and the ratio of bags to arms he is currently juggling.

Jack hears his grandmother call again just the very second that he and this soldier make eye contact, and she’s calling, “Are you _sure_ you don’t need my help, dear?” And this soldier Gabriel Reyes who Jack doesn’t know the name of yet, he makes eye contact with Jack at that moment and his expression isn’t the stone-faced image of practiced unfeeling like it was before but it certainly isn’t _friendly_ either and he nearly-drops-than-catches one of the bags with an arm that still has another bag tucked under it in a way Jack didn’t know to be possible.

They stand awkward with one another and this close Jack can see how young the guy is; he can’t possibly be more than two years Jack’s senior if at all but the way he’s looking at Jack like it’s Jack’s fault that he’s here in Indiana in the middle of summer juggling some old woman’s groceries in an all-black outfit makes Jack feel like a child so he calls back to his grandmother loud and impertinent with a right-to-be-here attitude: “I got it, gran!”

“Oh good, you’re home,” she says when she appears in the doorway prompted by Jack’s voice, all wrinkles and tired smiles for the two men in front of her. About the soldier in her driveway with an armful of groceries, she says: “Aren’t these folks just _so good_ to help out? And in this heat? They’re in town for the week, I think.”

There’s something about the way she’s talking about the soldier, about this man that is Jack’s peer, like he’s a force of nature that just occurred without sentience or intention and happened to be benevolent that makes Jack uncomfortable but he says nothing, just nods his head, gives a gruff response like, “Yeah,” and sticks his head in the car to grab the one remaining bag of goods that even someone who was a force of nature couldn’t add to the pile.

The three of them: Jack, the soldier unknown to him as Gabriel Reyes, and Jack’s grandmother return inside the house. The screen door shuts with a bang behind them and the soldier has barely sat the bags on the counter when Jack’s grandma is insisting, _insisting_ , that he stay for a cold drink on account of how impossibly hot it is outside as if they had any one of them forgotten even for a second.

For reasons that seem more like instinct than anything, Jack feels compelled to stay in the house as well and suddenly he finds himself sitting across from the soldier his age with sun-kissed skin and nothing much to say on his grandparents’ hideously floral couches while grandma fusses over putting the groceries away and gathering some iced tea in the kitchen.

They take turns staring at one another and then at anything else, Jack on the edge of his cushion like he might need to jump up at any time and Gabriel positioned similarly though his shoulders are ironically lower than Jack’s, more relaxed despite the fact that this is _Jack’s_ house thank you very much.

Without thinking twice, because thinking twice would be an admission of a need for thoughtfulness, Jack says: “So what are you guys, exactly?”

“SEP. Soldier Enhancement Program.”

“What’s that mean?”

Jack is incredulous and offended at his own lack of knowledge about this thing that he could never have had any prior knowledge of anyway.

“Means we’re better than other soldiers.”

“..what are you doing _here?_ ”

Jack is referring to Bloomington, Indiana, of course, of course, of course.

“Press tour.”

“Really?”

“ _Basically_.”

More sticky-hot-sweet silence growing loud over the sound of glasses clinking and filling with ice. Jack isn’t done – he doesn’t know why he isn’t done, but he isn’t. So he asks,

“You got a name?” _Or do they not let you have those?_

“Reyes.”

That’s… not a first name. That’s a last name. Indiana not-quite-farmboy Jack Morrison may be corn-fed and white as Wonderbread but he knows that much. Grandma is humming in the kitchen and moments away from her debut role as the patron saint of iced tea on a summer afternoon and ‘Reyes’ looks ready to never say another word again but then he opens his mouth and for some reason Jack is leaning towards him like he might not catch whatever is about to come out.

“ _How about you?_ ”

“Excuse me?”

“Name. You got one?”

“Morrison.”

That’s not a first name, either. Jack takes it upon himself to clarify. Leading by example.

“ _Jack_ Morrison.”

“…Gabriel Reyes.”

Gabriel Gabriel Gabriel Reyes. Gabriel Reyes with the golden-brown eyes. Gabriel Reyes, the soldier without a gun. Gabriel Reyes sipping tea on his grandma’s couch. Gabriel Reyes who left without so much as an excuse just as soon as the glass was empty but is still sipping tea on the couch later that night in Jack’s mind long after sundown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all are enjoying this so far!! I really like summer fics and i don't.... know why... because I hate the heat so much lmao. Jack is such a sweet summer boy and he just has no idea what his life is about or where it's about to go ISN'T IT SO MUCH FUN this gay lil farmboy is about to have his world rocked and no one even asked his permission or got his opinion on it at ALL. Thanks to everyone who has left kudos so far. Every kudos (kudo???) and comment I receive brings me so much happiness. Y'all are the best.


	3. Little Cream Soda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack goes to help out a neighbor and finds more than just a heckin' cute doggo waiting for him. Turns out that Gabe is way more fun than super serious soldier Gabriel Reyes and no one can argue that there's anything wrong with a soldier taking his shirt off in ninety degree weather, no, not even Jack, not even if he's not sure about anything else (and he's not!!!!!).

Jack is used to being “the baby”. It isn’t something he has earned or something he can argue with, and even in school he was usually the youngest of his friend group – though they were few and far between and less like groups and more like smatterings of people who were fairly nice to him. This probably has a lot to do with being an only child raised by his grandparents on the edge of town, and a lot to do with weekly meetings in the school grief counselor’s office, and a lot to do with whatever it is that keeps young men from knowing how to participate in things that aren’t explicitly about them.

Folks around his neighborhood are all generally older than him by at least twenty years and so there’s always been at least one pair of aging eyes on him, keeping track and keeping progress. He is on his way to a house of one such pair of eyes. It’s not a long walk – faster by far by bike or car – but Jack takes his time with things, especially in the summer, especially after this morning.

This morning leaving his house and his grandparents with the TV on, the TV was telling him about omnic activity ongoing in Russia and in South Africa too with pictures and footage. In all of this footage there is metal, metal, metal and fire and sad and serious flesh – and nothing at all like his toy soldiers. He tries to imagine it, the actual thick of it, not the before/after interviews and photos but the actual chaos itself and when he tries to put faces onto the soldiers to save them from the faceless green anonymity that his toys once suffered it is of course only the face of Gabriel Reyes that he is able to find.

Jack arrives at his neighbor’s place on time and ready to help with whatever kind of thing an old widow might need his help with in exchange for a few bucks an hour – another in a long line of summertime jobs he’s floated since he was thirteen. The place is the sort of long and wide pre-fab home that manages to grow charm through plastic flower beds and a wheelchair accessible ramp going up to the front door which has some kind of a kitschy knick-knack hanging on it: some kind of teddy bear holding a heart that says ‘Welcome’ or, in this case, a very similar teddy bear wearing a star-spangled Uncle Sam hat with matching vest for the occasion.

He knocks loudly for the benefit of the aging woman inside, and waits. He knocks again, and waits, and then notices the side gate to the backyard is loose and as he approaches – yes, yes, the wafting notes of a deep voice experimenting with gentleness lilting through the air.

Pushing the gate open with a creak calls the attention of a red-tinted golden retriever with gray around the eyes so that Jack is immediately stopped in his tracks by the dog’s demands for pets and he is half-bent to pat its head and under its chin with one hand on each while he takes stock of the situation. He doesn’t need to check his watch to know that he isn’t late, but he wants to do it anyway so he can give some kind of context to the ‘what the fuck are you doing here’ look that he’s giving SEP soldier Gabriel Reyes who is chatting happily with his – _Jack’s_ – neighbor.

“Oh! Here he is,” his neighbor announces when she notices, turning towards him and the dog whose tail is gently tapping against Jack’s leg. Her hair is mostly silver, her skin tanned from time and family, with lively brown eyes quick as anything. Gabriel’s face is one-hundred percent different from all of the two times Jack has seen it now in that its expression is gentle, pleasant even, his eyebrows kindly arched and his head tilted down to listen to the shorter woman speak.

The dog at Jack’s feet seems satisfied with Jack’s greeting and trots off towards the others, clearly trying to signal Jack into doing the same, to keep the group together. Leave it to a dog to want to group up. Leave it to Jack to not know what else to do except comply, so he does, taking quick stock of the yard which is mostly mulch and stacked flag stones with a wheelbarrow or two off to the sides.

The woman, his neighbor, she explains gently to the two of them that she needs the flag stones set into a sort of path. She explains the general idea, the planned pathway from one gate to the other with a diverging path towards the steps of the back porch, and all the while Gabriel and Jack are exchanging looks of increasing seriousness, each of them self-assured in their ability to perform the tasks being outlined to them better than the man standing beside him.

Starting out is difficult. Each of them wants to take charge, and neither one wants to play second-in-command. The stones are heavy and what’s more, Jack is reluctant to admit that while he occasionally requires a hand from Reyes to move one of the larger slabs, Gabriel appears able to carry more than one at once if he needs to – and he looks good while doing it. It flares up a competitive streak in Jack that he hasn’t touched in years outside of a junior high gym class or a track meet and it’s only when he nearly drops a stone on his foot in ninety degree weather that sheer exhaustion finally checks his ego for good.

That’s when things start to finally move smoothly. Suddenly the two of them are agreeing on plans before execution, and though Jack’s face is flushed and hot by the time they are done, he is also filled with a flush of triumphant completion. Before he knows what he’s doing he is accosting Gabriel with a request for a high-five and the smile he gets from the soldier feels like a whole separate victory in itself.

The two of them have just sat down on the step to the back porch, with a golden retriever between them. Gabriel is leaning with his elbows on his knees when he all at once pulls the black t-shirt he had stripped down to off and over his head. Jack, like most folks, has been taught not to stare but this is the first time in his entire life he’s seen a body like Gabriel’s – a body by the military, whatever that means. Gabriel’s shoulders are brown and glistening and the muscles at the base of his neck seem big enough to plant flags in and claim as sovereign territory. Jack is trying to think of a reason good enough to look away when his neighbor reappears with two glasses of something cold and sweet for them.

“I’d invite you boys inside,” she explains in a voice that is dark like tinted glass. “But let’s keep the sweat and dirt outside together where they belong. You two feel free to come by any time after you get a nice shower in you, hear me?”

She is handing them each a glass of lemonade and Jack is now acutely aware of how deep the sweat stain on the neck of his own gray t-shirt is. He has never worried before about tan lines and for the first time he pushes a sleeve up worriedly on his pink arm. There isn’t enough sunscreen in the world to stop that sort of thing. Gabriel is holding the lemonade in one hand and scratching the dog behind the ears with the other with the sort of deliberation that suggests he has pet many a dog in his day and has come up with the best method for it. Or maybe they teach you that in SEP too.

She leaves them with their lemonade and the dog, Jack in his sweat-soaked shirt and Gabriel glistening and easy. It is then that Jack knows he must fill the silence with something other than his distracted staring.

“…so you said this was like a press tour or something.”

“Basically,” Gabriel repeats himself from the day before and Jack worries for a second that they are back to stilted half-responses before he continues. “Folks up top want the public to feel safe with us – to feel like we’re there for their use and protection before the program gets too much bigger. We’re rolling out across the country, ‘making personal connections’.” He says the last part like they’re someone else’s words and it makes Jack smirk a little bit though he isn’t sure why.

“I didn’t realize we needed to feel safe while renovating our backyards, particularly.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure this is what the boss had in mind when we got here, but. No need too small, right? That sounds like something patriotic to say.”

Gabriel brings the lemonade to his lips and Jack chooses to watch the lazy wagging of the dog’s tail rather than the easy movement of Gabriel’s throat but that doesn’t mean he can’t imagine it.

“You’re staying for the holiday, then?” Jack asks, sucking down the last of his drink because he can’t help himself in this heat.

“Yep. Then we’re out of here. We’re heading west, gonna end up in California unless someone somewhere changes their mind. It’s been known to happen.”

To that Jack says, “Right,” but he doesn’t know anything about that. He doesn’t know anything about bosses, or California, or saying the patriotic thing. Is the patriotic thing something about blowing up omnics? This is a question for later, thrown down among a million others.

When it’s time to leave, the woman is pressing a handful of cash into Jack’s hand in the doorway on her porch and Gabriel is telling her no, no, he couldn’t take it, he can’t take it, he’s just here to help ma’am but she won’t take no for an answer and insists a soldier on leave needs a little spending cash. Eventually he pockets it maybe more to shut her up than anything and when the two boys part ways at the bottom of the dirt driveway Jack opens up his mouth against his better judgment.

“Guess I’ll see you around, Gabriel.”

“Gabe. Gabe is better. From you civilians.”

“See you later Gabe.”

“Yeah, yeah. See you, Morrison.”

The nickname that’s not really a nickname makes Jack’s heart swell in his chest and he holds onto that feeling for the rest of the day, through his trip to the corner store to pick up sparklers for the fourth and a little cream soda for the walk home. He thinks of nothing else and so it is understandable that he doesn’t recognize Gabe’s voice at first when it’s playing outside his head and it is stern and angry and commanding and nothing like the way he said ‘Gabe is better’ to Jack just an hour or two ago.

It happens quick as Jack is walking and he doesn’t stop to stare the way he did earlier on the back porch, but what he sees is this: SEP soldier Gabriel Reyes behind the corner store with another soldier speaking in a terse and hushed voice, his brow furrowed deep and every other word just sharp and biting enough to be understood even from a distance as a direct order.

This, this was not the man who had been happily petting a lazy golden retriever, this was not the man who smiled softly at an old woman who was asking for help or the one made jokes about what he thought he was supposed to say. This man had his shoulders practically up to his ears and was looming, _looming_ over another soldier who had recoiled into themself as a way to weather the lecture that Gabriel was dishing out. Apparently Reyes was some sort of cadet leader, or whatever the word might be. The boss beneath the big boss. The guy who gets yelled at by the bigger guy, and in turn gets to yell at the guy even smaller than himself. Was that guy really Gabriel?

That night Jack keeps flipping channels in his head between the different versions of the SEP soldier he had seen: Gabe or Gabriel or Reyes. They flicker back and forth like slides on a carousel intercut with those broad sweating shoulders and the rippled stomach Jack had refused to let himself really look at for reasons he couldn’t understand later on.

He falls asleep again to the sound of the whirring of his fan and the crickets outside his window. The night comes on slow and sticky and nothing seems to cool off as much as it ought to. He dreams of omnics with exploding bullets like fireworks flooding through the streets of his town, through the roads of his neighborhood, through the fields and the yards and flattening everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just cranking this thing out, folks. I got the next day all planned and lemme tell you I am excited. Jack's just trying to make sense of everything he's seen, and he's gonna see a lot more before we're through whew WHEWWWWW


	4. Rainwater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack gets caught staring at the SEP soldiers and then has to go face Gabe and invite him to tomorrow's 4th of July party. Somehow this involves cows and a rainstorm and Jack feeling, just, super duper gay about the whole thing.

It’s the day before the fourth and Jack doesn’t wait for the heat to wake him. He is up with the sun, with some kind of new-found desire to take control of himself alive in his brain; the lazy haze of summer has never been thicker and yet suddenly Jack wants structure and schedules, the kind that usually melt away in the heat, the kind that mean he’s already showered and fed before the day begins as if he’s got something much worth doing just waiting for him to hop to it.

He lingers in his attic bedroom with naught else but a towel on, wrapped around his waist with his blonde hair already drying in patches at the ends. He is idly turning over some things in his room, searching for a comb or a fresh pair of underwear (whichever he finds first) when a grouping of black outside his window catches his eye.

Jack has to lean over his desk a little to look out the window to the ground below, but from this high up he can see them all: SEP units coming up the hill, jogging together as one including the woman he saw leading them the first day, and he can see them all without worrying about being seen himself, he thinks.

It’s been a few days now, but still Jack can’t stop thinking about it – about him, about Gabe, about how they’re more or less the same age as far as he knows but Gabe is (must be) miles away from home, up at dawn every day, and doing what? Training, but training for _what_? Is it possible for the two of them to be this close physically, geographically, biologically, and yet be this different? For all Jack knows, the SEP soldiers have been running past his house every day since they got here with him fast asleep in front of his fan and he wouldn’t have known better. It’s only today that he decided to pull his ass out of bed that he gets to see them. They could have been here every day for the past month and he wouldn’t know any better – they haven’t been, he’s sure, but they _could have_.

There are a million and one things that Gabe could have done in the past, could be doing right now in his head, could maybe do in his sleep that Jack doesn’t know anything about, has never even considered. He keeps seeing that look on Gabe’s face from yesterday laying into the other soldier, all angled lines and gritted teeth. It was a face he didn’t think to wonder about Gabe ever making. It was a face that he himself had never worn, and made all their differences feel that more real.

Gabe is trusted to look after others, to reprimand them when necessary, to coordinate this military “press tour” into something worth doing. It’s the kind of responsibility that an entire nation trusts you with, and nothing like being trusted with the keys to the family car a few times a month. Jack, he can beat most folks his age countywide in a hundred yard dash, he knows how to change the oil on most old vehicles without hardly spilling any, and he can tell you the names of John Wayne’s biggest films and at least three Barbra Streisand albums off the top of his head thanks to his grandparents.

How far is that going to get him?

He knows he wants to do something good for the world, he knows he doesn’t like saying that out loud on account of how childish it sounds, and he knows he’s got to go to college or get a job pretty soon here before grandma and grandpa get too much older.

But what good is knowing all of that, on a July morning in Bloomington, Indiana?

The soldiers are moving as one solid unit in front of his house now, and Jack’s introspective line of self-interrogation is interrupted once he is able to pick out Gabe from the rest of them – near the front, of course. This doesn’t surprise him even though he by rights doesn’t know Gabe well enough to know why it doesn’t, and he’s watching idly when the woman who is ostensibly the squadron’s commander pulls Gabe to the side, increasing Jack’s attention ten-fold. They are just past Jack’s front porch and it’s early enough to assume pretty safely that no one else is around to see or at least this is what Jack guesses the thought process is here as he watches attentively. The rest of the unit keeps going – doesn’t even stop to look, but Jack doesn’t notice because all he cares about is the one Gabriel Reyes anymore.

Immediately the first thing he notices is Gabe’s posture. It’s easy enough to assume that soldiers at attention and in their company will prostrate themselves differently than when at ease, around a civilian or patting a golden retriever, but this is different. He looks … rigid. Jack is far enough away that he can’t catch the details but it’s enough to see the far-away look on Gabe’s face, the kind of straight-faced intensity that one wears when one is just trying to weather the moment and that’s when Jack realizes this is a repeat/role-reversal of the scene he saw yesterday because his squadron leader is laying into Gabe just the same way that Gabe was doing before. It’s subtle really, mostly staccato hand gestures and squared up shoulders explaining whatever it is that she’s unhappy with Gabe for. Jack, for the life of him, can’t imagine what that might be.

Jack is worrying his bottom lip absent mindedly when Gabe’s eyes snap for one eternal instant to Jack’s face through his bedroom window and it kindles a feeling of ice-cold embarrassment in Jack, running down his back like he’s the fool for someone’s bucket-over-the-head practical joke that makes him clutch at the towel around his waist and stumble backwards out of the line of sight. His heart is racing out a beat that translates to something like, “Holy shit, that was close,” and he doesn’t move anywhere damn near that window for the rest of the morning.

When his gran ask Jack on his way out the door to stop by the SEP camp and invite the soldiers over for their annual Fourth of July block party, there isn’t much Jack can think of that he would like to do less. Sit out in the middle of the dirt road in the mid-afternoon with no shade cover and two handfuls of unwrapped hard candies maybe sounds like a worse time, but it’s the day before the party and Jack stopped telling his grandma no something like ten years ago so he decides, a compromise: he’ll do it last thing before coming home.

Most of what he has to do today is making visits, extending invitations to nearby neighbors who probably don’t need them and would show up anyway but receive them out of habitual politeness, collecting promises of what supplies or food dishes each will contribute, and in general acting as the Youth Spokesperson of aging rural Bloomington. It’s not a gig he remembers signing up for, and by the end of it his cheeks are sore from performative smiling and despite his best efforts he is mixed-emotions dreading-excited to stop by the SEP camp before home.

He’s never been to the camp, but he’s already seen it, already walked by it a couple times in the past day or two and each time Jack makes a point not to look for too long. For some reason he is hesitant to call attention to the soldiers himself when he is on his own, some feeling like it might be rude to act like they haven’t just been here all along. Like maybe they would leave sooner if he did. True acceptance comes from being ignored, or rather treated as a standard part of the group, and for some reason Jack feels very strongly that the SEP soldiers should feel accepted.

The camp itself is a series of tents organized fairly close to one another, propped up on the edge of someone’s property who considered it such an honor to donate their space to the SEP soldiers instead of relegating it to another summer of overgrown neglect. Walking up to the camp, Jack feels supremely awkward and out of place in his t-shirt, faded jeans, and old high-top sneakers, not to mention the recent memory of having been caught watching them with absolutely no excuse. Lucky for him he was only caught by one person in particular, but there’s nothing to say Gabe hadn’t gone around and told the rest of them. This is a fear that is only furthered as a possibility with every look he receives as he moves into the camp.

The recruits are varied across race and gender in a way Jack didn’t much notice before but now that he’s here and looking for Gabe, cautiously stepping this way and that over the dried grass flattened by unprecedented activity levels, he is exchanging glances with many of them in a way that forces him to confront the individuality of each and every one. So many people living a life he had never really conceived of, and all right here in Bloomington for just a brief time.

Then comes a voice from behind him, “Civilian,” and a hand just, _just_ , touching his shoulder for a second. It is, of course, Gabriel Reyes, standing over him and wearing that SEP soldier face that’s got him looking right through Jack like clear glass on a blue sky day. Gabe asks, “How can I assist you?” His voice is even and impersonal and Jack rocks back on his heels nervously, his hands fidgeting with each other behind his back. Jack worries absurdly for a second that Gabe might bring up locking eyes with him through his bedroom window this morning and it’s that fear that pushes words out his mouth finally.

“Hey! I, uh- I came by to ask you something.” He rubs at the back of his neck awkwardly, quickly adding: “All of you, actually. My gran sent me.”

Gabe responds swiftly with his hands quietly at his sides and his laser-sharp focus boring holes in Jack’s brow, not quite looking him in the eyes: “Understood. What is your question?”

“Gran wants me to invite you and… and everyone, I mean, to this party we’re having tomorrow. Fourth of July thing.” Jack glances around at the pristine tents, the organized rations, information being passed back and forth right in front of him between soldiers with hand gestures and clipboards in a way he doesn’t, he can’t, understand. “You can come right?”

If Gabriel is surprised by the question, he doesn’t let on, just comes back quickly with: “I’ll notify my superior about the invitation and she will get back to you or your grandmother as soon as possible.”

This is SEP soldier cadet leader whatever-the-right-title-is Gabriel Reyes talking and all at once, Jack realizes, it’s pissing him off. He hadn’t thought about it before but he came here to talk to _Gabe_ , not whoever this person was – the same person who was getting reprimanded outside Jack’s house, probably the person Gabe had been stuck being all morning and afternoon, and yes, it was pissing Jack off for reasons he didn’t bother chasing after.

“One more thing,” Jack says, all at once and with his thumbs casually stuck in his front pockets.

“…yes?”

“I need your help- that is, your assistance with something. Soldier. Can you take the time? …it’s urgent.”

Gabriel Reyes thinks about this, catches that look in Jack’s eye, and he doesn’t say anything except “Wait here,” and disappears for about thirty seconds before returning with a nod and the kind of soft expression that makes Jack feel seen by him for the first time today in a way that he wants.

This interaction hasn’t been planned and so things are quiet for most of their walk together, Jack and Gabe slowly making their way down one of the back roads with Jack, for once, leading. Every once in a while Gabe asks Jack about this ‘assistance’ he says he needs and Jack, over and over, responds with some variation of “Almost there,” for the next fifteen minutes. The sun is strong overhead and little beads of sweat are collecting behind Jack’s ears and running down his neck to the collar of his shirt, or down his back in periodic reminders that make him straighten up tall. His cheeks feel warm beneath his eyes without touching them to know it.

Eventually Jack peels off from the road and together, one at a time, they wiggle through a space in a rotting fence and find themselves in a sea of golden grass about thigh high that swishes and folds with each step. Gabe is following Jack and Jack is acutely aware of this role as leader so he takes it very seriously and leads them over to a clearing of shade beneath a willow tree where the grass hasn’t grown quite so tall and isn’t quite so golden brown. It’s here against the trunk that he unceremoniously drops down on his backside and, stretching his feet out, pats the ground beside him.

Gabe, who has been unwinding bit by bit with every step, finally cracks a little smile that validates every single one of Jack’s life decisions up until this point as good ones and says, “Some kinda assistance you need, huh?” but he drops down beside him to the errant chorus of calling cows in the distance.

“Yeah. Obviously I need someone to watch my back while I’m out here with these… wild beasts.” Jack gestures to the cows, one of which is some ten feet or so away and grazing steadily closer in the clearing.

For his part, Gabe just shakes his head, and says some performative “should be’s”, like “I should be cleaning,”, “I should be training,”, “I should be doing anything else,” but he stays and that’s how Jack knows it’s just a matter of getting those out of the way.

Clever Bloomington local Jack Morrison tells him, “You’re just familiarizing yourself with the landscape. That’s a tactical advantage, right?”

Gabe’s eyes go wide for a second at Jack’s usage of jargon but it brings a laugh from his lips like nothing Jack’s heard from him before. “You need to watch less war movies, Morrison.”

“Don’t be mad because I can talk like you without any of the training.”

“It’s the training that makes it so hard to talk,” Gabe says instantly, free and easy and leaning against the tree himself. The two of them are close enough that their thighs and knees are touching on one side, legs spread out long.

Jack doesn’t know what to say to that, he’s just looking at his feet until the smell of smoke pulls him out of it and he realizes Gabe has lit some kind of sweet-smelling cigarette next to him and is casually smoking from it. The smoke pours from his lips like magic.

Noticing Jack noticing him, Gabe says, “My last bad habit,” and pulls a box from the waistband of his pants. He offers it to Jack. “Want one?”

Jack shakes his head before even thinking about it, because he doesn’t smoke, of course, that’s just a thing about him that’s true the way he guesses it must be true about Gabe that he _does_ smoke. It’s another in a long line of things that Jack feels stupid for having not guessed about Gabe, and having never done himself.

“Good,” Gabe says, blowing the smoke from his nose like he’s an old pro and not a young and dumb maybe-twenty-something kid in an Indiana field. “This is my last pack before I quit cold turkey. Didn’t really want to share, anyway, and I should be telling you not to smoke and to stay in school and all of that.”

The two of them, they just sit there with the sun getting higher and the clouds rolling by, with Gabe smoking and Jack not smoking, just talking about Indiana and life in the SEP (though Gabe is quick to change the subject) and cows once one comes close enough that Gabe has to move his feet out of the way to keep her from nosing snot and grass bits all over his legs.

They are talking about nothing in particular when a firework goes off a mile or two out and Gabe all at once jumps like he’s been shocked. His arm flies out in front of Jack’s chest like he’s going to shield him from something imaginary or invisible.

Jack, with nothing else to say, stupidly explains: “…firework.”

And Gabe, with nothing else to do, lets his arm down, shakes his head, mumbles some kind of apology and stands up.

“Time to go.” He is offering Jack his hand. Clouds have gathered in the sky behind him and his head-to-toe black uniform makes him stick out like oil in the ocean against the backdrop of the field. “I’ll walk you back home.”

It’s not a question so Jack doesn’t answer, doesn’t make a decision, just grabs the hand that’s being offered to him like he’s meant to and hops to his feet. The moon is already visible and low in the blue-gray sky, a pale ghost of spherical whiteness and the crickets starting their song as the cows watch them leave, Jack and Gabe one by one crawling through the gate where they had come through.

The walk home is quiet like before, but different somehow. Where Jack lead them before, they now walk side by side, and Jack takes turns watching their feet kicking up tiny clouds of dust and stealing glances at the look on Gabe’s face as it turns from tense to placid in small increments with every step.

Jack can see his front porch up the hill when the first clap of thunder sounds and, he notices, that sound doesn’t make Gabriel jump but it does make him turn his head up to the sky and then look at Jack like Jack is responsible for the changing Indiana weather. And Jack, Jack is about to say something obvious and stupid like “Looks like rain,” when the first droplet hits him on the nose and then in the eye and he’s squinting and rubbing at it when the drops double in size and speed so that all of a sudden the two boys are caught in a downpour that’s come to make mud out of the dirt road.

The only second thought Jack has to grabbing Gabe by the hand and pulling him into a running sprint for his front porch is that he doesn’t want to have second thoughts about it in case he loses his nerve, and the two of them run with their heads down and Jack with one arm up in front of his face in front.

By the time they get to the safety of his porch, droplets of rain are collecting and dripping off of Jack’s nose, his hair, his fingertips. Gabe, wiping the water from his face and only slightly out of breath, tells Jack, “Damn, you’re fast, Morrison.”

Jack shrugs, tells him, “There’s not a whole lot to do around here but run,” but inside he’s beaming with pride and if he could do it again, he thinks to himself, he’d run even faster and hold onto Gabe’s hand even tighter.

“You want a towel or something?” Jack asks, and then, carefully, “…or you wanna come in and wait it out?” They are standing in front of Jack’s front door and even as he’s asking it he is hoping, praying, pleading that his grandparents are busy somewhere else and out of the house despite how unlikely that is.

“Can’t. Gotta get back,” Gabe answers and Jack feels foolish and stupid for being so far ahead of himself and so assured that the answer would be ‘yes’. Of course Gabriel Reyes has things to do, things other than sitting on the antique second-hand furniture of Jack Morrison’s childhood home waiting to dry off. He has more important things, things that his country needs him for. Right?

“Right,” Jack answers because there’s nothing else that he knows to say and then the two of them are just standing alone on Jack’s front porch while the rain bounces off the roof in a dull battering, waiting for what comes next as though neither of them know what that is. Gabe is looking at Jack looking at Gabe and Jack feels the urge to shift and fidget awkwardly like he had earlier at the SEP camp.

Gabe opens his mouth to break the silence and tells him sweetly, “I don’t mind the rain. Feels good with how hot and dry it’s been.”

“Yeah. It does.”

Jack is smiling though he isn’t sure why and Gabe reaches out, puts his hand on the side of Jack’s forearm, so that the warmth of the palm of his hand is partially over the sleeve of Jack’s white wet t-shirt and partially against Jack’s slick skin.

With all the sanctity of a promise, Gabe looks him in the eye and tells him, “See you tomorrow, Morrison.” Then his hand drops and he’s walking away and for all his sweet-smelling cigarettes and military garb and SEP training he looks just like any other young man walking away from Jack Morrison’s front porch. And Jack, leaning against a sun-warmed support beam on his porch, is just any other young man watching him go and already thinking of the next time he’ll be back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took a quick break yesterday but we're back to it and i'm having so much fun!! Thanks again to everyone who has taken the time to read. I can't wait for the next chapter and I hope you all feel the same way. Poor Jack is so awkward lmfao but Gabe and him are really getting along and I just love the idea of the two of them just chillin' with some cows.


	5. Hard Lemonade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack gets stood up at the Fourth of July block party and decides to go on Gabe hunt that ends with fireworks of a different kind~*~*~*~

So now it’s the fourth and like it knows any better Bloomington, Indiana has grown insultingly hot, the kind of heat that wakes you up when the hour is still in the single digits and sits at the back of your neck waiting to take you over. Jack takes a chance over and over again by glancing out his window every now and then, lingering in his bedroom before the temperature drives him out for the afternoon, but nothing except dust and stray cats seem to pass by outside so he goes out, reluctant and covered in sunscreen at his grandmother’s gentle insistence.

The errands Jack has left to run today are few but essential; nevertheless he is quietly dreading them all save for picking up the ice for the sheer thrill of carrying the cool bags in his hands. He takes the family car, eases it down the road, and while the seats are filling up with plastic plates and cups and bags and bags of ice with each stop Jack is oh so casually scanning the sidewalks and roadsides for a familiar face that never appears. He spends the long afternoon in lazy productivity, only half paying attention during any full moment. He expects to have seen Gabe by now. He expects to feel differently about having not seen him too, for some reason.

Jack showers before he’s meant to go down to the party, partially to wash off the sweat and the nerves even though both will be back in full force by tonight and partially to fill his time with something, anything other than waiting around in the thick heat of the dying afternoon. The gathering is at yet another neighbor’s property, one that has an especially generous hill near one edge that allows them to look in on the city’s firework show that happens further into town without ever having to leave their backyards. Whatever cooking is done gets done in advance, what with the fields being such fire hazards and all, and anyway the tradition of next-day casseroles suits the quietly aging crowd that’s gathered out on the countryside.

So the party starts and there goes Jack, a little late as always, taking his time with the walk because anything might happen on these back country roads, who really knows, so he walks slow waiting for anything to might happen but what he gets for his efforts are eyefuls of gnats and a slow assault from mosquitos coming out for the approaching sunset. He arrives well-bitten and red-in-the-face to match from where sun and humility have been taking turns with different shades of pink, but he sees SEP uniforms almost instantly and it makes his heart jump and his stomach pitch with wild anticipation.

Navigating the crowd is difficult. Not because the crowd is very large exactly, so much as it’s really less of a crowd and more of a gathering of friends and neighbors, all of whom know his name and all of whom want to know what he’s been up to this summer and what he plans on doing come fall and doesn’t he hold the record still for the hundred meter dash after graduating. All these inquiries are well-meaning, and for Indiana-born Jack Morrison who was raised by his grandparents and is bound to see these people countless more times before next weekend even, well-meaning inquiries are easily the toughest for him to brush off. There’s a certain rudeness to rushing which Jack has yet to acquaint himself with, so he answers things as politely as he can and all the while he’s looking over shoulders and between heads for Gabe or something Gabe-shaped at least.

He goes around and around and around, carrying a plate of something fried and cheesy, and every time he goes around there is no Gabe and every time he goes around less and less people stop him to chat. He even snags a cup of hard lemonade, sweet and biting at the same time, holding it close to his chest like a secret he’s waiting to let Gabe in on if only he’d show. At least once he locks eyes with the female SEP squadron commander and she gives him a look that makes him do a one-eighty on the spot.

What had started at first as an idle desire to see Gabe (especially given Gabe’s previous declaration of “See you tomorrow, Morrison,” playing in Jack’s head like a highlight recap) has turned into a kind of prime directive that is _actively_ ruining Jack’s ability to have a good time.

Jack stabs at a slice of red velvet cake with white cream cheese stripes petulantly. Folks around him are mingling happily, and someone is playing some old country music that doesn’t get played outside of private residences anymore. Jack is standing around like a date that’s been stood up, and with the sort of arrogant vitriol that his teenage years affords him so easily he wonders just as petulantly why in hell they even bother celebrating this holiday. What could really possibly be worth all this fuss, all these fire hazards and reasons for your dog to run away, when there are hordes of omnic machines rolling out in towns and cities just like this one only a few plane rides away?

He picks at his cake and now he’s brooding, he knows it, so he flips the channel in his brain without knowing what to next and finds himself wondering instead about the taste of cigarettes. It’s the kind of unwelcome thought that pushes him into action and just like that he takes off, leaves the party and the burning orange glow of the sun starting to set to fucking find himself Gabriel “See you tomorrow, Morrison” No-Show Reyes.

Because he needs an excuse, because his brain tells him he needs an excuse anyway, Jack is wandering around with this piece of red velvet cake on a star-spangled paper plate and he walks through the deserted SEP camp, the deserted corner store, and even checks at his own house all carrying this cake on a plate like a hall pass, waiting for someone to ask what he’s doing.

It’s the wafting calling of the cows that clues him in, finally, and by the time he wriggles himself through the broken fence and comes up on Gabe sitting beneath that same tree from yesterday in front of the same cow from yesterday all he’s got to show for his efforts is most of a slice of cake that has about fifty mosquitoes caught in the frosting. Gabe’s hands are laced together behind his head so his elbows are wide, his chest open, and he’s wearing a black tank top instead of his full uniform and fatigues so that Jack can see his arms in a way he isn’t used to.

And Jack being Jack just holds the cake out to Gabe anyway, which seems appropriate what with how neither of them have said a thing despite the fact that Gabriel certainly must have heard Jack coming through the grass before he appeared all sun-soaked and towing baked goods.

“For me?” Gabe asks with a smirk that makes Jack want to do he doesn’t know what. “How…” Gabe is taking a closer look, leaning forward by bending at the middle. “Gross.”

Jack laughs and pushes the plate into Gabe’s hands without remorse so he’s empty-handed and able to take a seat next to him without babysitting that stupid piece of cake anymore. Gabe makes it a home next to him and promptly forgets about it.

“I thought you were coming,” Jack says, because apparently he just has to say things if he feels them without even considering an alternative option. “To the thing. The party.” In his head Jack tells himself he knows words and to try using them.

Gabe is quiet for a second.

“I _was_ coming. I was going to.” Gabe must be feeling the way Jack is looking at the side of his face because he quickly adds, “Eventually.”

Jack has some feelings about all of this and he is likely to have Gabe suffer through them at some point but then Gabe is talking again and what he says is: “Miss watching me through your window this morning?”

He says it, of course, with a smile that when combined with his words has Jack’s head spinning and he can’t help it, he hides his face in his hands in a move that has Gabe laughing. Jack Morrison who is so sure he has never blushed in his life is blushing pretty hard right now so he digs deep to get ahold of himself before his hands come down all the way.

“… _sorry_ ,” is all Jack knows how to say about _that_ , even if Gabe doesn’t seem pissed or weirded out, even. He’s still just laughing and so maybe, Jack thinks, maybe he’s not really that sorry. “I didn’t mean to be weird about it. I just saw- I saw you-“

“You saw me getting my ass chewed out, is what you saw,” Gabe finishes the thought for him. So maybe Jack is actually kind of sorry again.

“Yeah that looked rough.”

Jack twitches his shoulder here or there when a fly lands on it. The sky is that gradient pink-orange-red that people put on postcards now, and every few seconds a cool breeze comes through to turn the sweat on his temples into icy relief.

“She didn’t like me keeping that money we got for the yard work,” Gabe explains without being prompted in a way that makes Jack feel close to him. He _is_ close to him. Shoulder to shoulder. Hip to hip.  Gabe says: “So much for spending cash, right?” Gabe sucks his teeth regretfully. Having lowered his arms when Jack sat next to him, one of his hands is on his own knee which is very much quite close to Jack’s knee. For his part, Jack has not noticed the sunset and Gabe has not noticed the cow casually inhaling the slice of cake-and-bugs meant for him.

Jack moves his hand to his own knee and they are basically but not actually really touching hands, just pinkies bumping together happily while the frogs and the crickets start to warm up for the night’s coming symphony.

Though the conversation has lulled, it doesn’t feel like silence. Whatever is between them in this moment on this Fourth of July evening is not emptiness waiting to be filled with words or something else. It is full already, heavy and waiting to rain down all around them like an Indiana thunderstorm ready to burst. After a while Jack feels Gabe’s pinky smoothly lay itself atop his own and he swallows hard, his mouth so dry and nervous that he just has to say something. Something when it comes out sounds like:

“What kind of cigarettes do you smoke?”

Gabe ‘ _hmms_ ’ audibly and his pinky doesn’t move. It feels feather light and Jack sneaks his hand under Gabe’s a little farther under the cover of Gabe’s thinking noise so that part of his hand is now on Gabe’s knee, too.

“Clove, usually.”

“…what do those taste like?”

The pounding of Jack’s heart is drowning out the songs of the crickets and the frogs and the cows. The sky is a deep blue, now, and racing towards black.

Gabe answers Jack’s question with another question: “Is that really what you want to know?” And Jack, who has been losing himself watching Gabe’s hand on top of his turns to look now into those warm brown eyes just barely visible in the dark and without even half a thought says, “No.”

So who kisses who here is unclear, both will say it was the other later if they say anything about it at all, but what’s important is the feeling of Gabe’s lips on his, so full and warm and, more than anything, eager and real and wanting Jack – really _wanting_ _him_ in a way Jack has never experienced before in his life. Gabe could be anywhere else right now and instead he is here awkwardly turned into a kiss with Jack Morrison.

Neither of them is willing to stop for fear that stopping might make the first kiss the last and so to make things easier for the both of them Jack tries his best to turn closer to Gabe, awkwardly searching for a place to put his hand and finding those sovereign shoulders of Gabe’s to be the perfect handhold. Gabe’s hands are on his waist feeling like they were made to do it. He is not sure when Gabe’s tongue slipped past his lips in the first place but he tastes smoky-sweet like how Jack thinks cloves must taste, the hard lemonade that he drank earlier still lingering on his own tongue. Jack is halfway in Gabe’s lap and kissing him like it’s his last chance when the fireworks go off.

_Boom!_

Like literal, actual fireworks.

_Crack!_

He’s kissing Gabe and Gabe is kissing him and in the darkness of the sky there are exploding visions of color and light and sound.

_Screech!_

Gabe isn’t flinching at all, and the two of them finally pull apart from one another to the sounds of explosions in the sky. They are all breathless laughter, Jack laughing because he is giddy and he knows he’s heard of fireworks going off when you kiss for the first time but this is _ridiculous_ and Gabe is laughing for reasons Jack doesn’t get to know but it sounds like music in the moonlight.

There is a moment now where they can make a decision. A moment where Jack is still in Gabe’s lap and Gabe’s hands are still on Jack’s waist and either one of them can make a decision to leave. But Jack being a patriot and all, he keeps his back to the sky and presses his lips against SEP soldier Gabriel Reyes once more. For the first time in eighteen summers Jack doesn’t watch the fireworks show in Bloomington, Indiana and doesn’t miss it for a second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! We did it fam!! What a fun ride. I do plan on posting some kind of short ass epilogue probably sometime tomorrow, because we gotta have the sad parting of ways but I had such a blast writing this and y'all are some really amazing and generous readers like thank you so much for reading and commenting I just really can't thank you enough. I hope you had as much fun reading as I did writing these dang cuties.
> 
> Fun fact: this kiss is based off of my first kiss with my girlfriend who I am now engaged to. we are celebrating our ninth anniversary next week. it was a week after the fourth and actual fireworks went off outside 


	6. Ice Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack and Gabe part ways and Jack must deal with his life post-Gabriel Reyes. Jack receives a visit from a familiar individual that may change his future forever.

Waking up on the fifth feels like a betrayal, though Jack can’t say why. The night before, for what it was, has only just begun to sink in for Jack, and already he has to get over it and move on because Gabe is leaving today and there’s nothing nothing nothing he can do about it. When the unit first moved into town with the understanding that it would only be for a few days, Jack had barely thought to care about it. Now, though, it’s like saying good-bye to the sunshine after so many months and weeks of low-hanging clouds.

And so they don’t do it, not really. They don’t _say_ it anyway, “good-bye”. There were many kisses on the night of the fourth between Jack and Gabe, sitting in that dried-up field beneath the willow tree, and many of them before they pulled away from one another for good that felt more like ‘good-bye’ than either was willing to admit or consider.

So on the front porch of Jack’s house when they are face to face and Gabe is back into SEP Gabriel Reyes mode with his expression unreadable within the ranks of his peers and Jack is standing with his back to the front door with his grandparents on either side pretending like he isn’t pretending to be sending them off with a smile, they don’t say anything at all to one another. They just stand there stealing glances while his grandparents talk to the squadron leader exchanging “thanks for everything”s and Jack with his hands shoved into the back pockets of his blue jeans to keep them still.

Jack waves good-bye like his grandma and grandpa do, only of course he’s waving to Gabriel and of course Gabriel is waving back to Jack just like the rest of his unit is waving to no one in particular. There’s a wave of uncertainty and fear and excitement that’s been sitting in the back of Jack’s brain like a coming storm and now with Gabe walking away from him and not looking back, little thoughts like droplets come breaking through like how he really doesn’t know who he is a whole lot better than he did a week ago, like how the world at large still seems so far off and alienated despite him living in it, like how he didn’t know how much he could want to kiss a person until he was doing it and now couldn’t do it any longer.

It’s the sort of existential fear and heartbreak that wells up in his eyes so he has to push it out with the back of his hand. The quiet knowledge that a man like Gabriel Reyes exists somehow smooths over all of it, even if he’s leaving Jack behind, and there’s a feeling like the first seed of hope that Jack’s too afraid of suffocating to properly examine right now.

He shoves it, all of it, sadness, fear, hope, heartache, and the feeling of his bitten lips somewhere deep down so that he can turn around and go back inside and listen to the screen door slam behind them.

The rest of the day is a wash. It’s too hot, just like it was yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and Jack can’t find it in himself to battle with it today so he just holes up in his room in front of the fan. He takes two ice cold showers just to keep himself sane. He avoids anything that might talk to him about omnics and the possibility of war. He leaves his bedroom only when the sun has made proper headway going down, down, down.

Jack is taking the trash out that night, carrying it down his long driveway in the glowing twilight of the swiftly coming evening, and he’s only just got the lid on the can when a voice that’s clear as an air raid horn speaks to him from over his shoulder.

“Hello Jack,” it says, and the voice is lilted with an accent Jack’s never heard in person before.

Turning around reveals the speaker to be the squadron leader, the woman he saw leading the soldiers the day they first came into town, the one he watched lay into Gabe for accepting money for a job well done. If he thought about all that long enough, he would have been glaring at her, but as it is he’s so startled that he can only look blinkingly into the calm expression on her face.

“I am SEP unit commander Moira O’Deorain,” she says, and Jack realizes he’s never realized how _tall_ she is before, or the redness of her hair tucked neatly into one of those military beret style hats, or anything at all really for having never been so close to her before, for having never really been all that interested in looking for very long.

And Indiana-born Jack Morrison in his blue jeans and gas-station t-shirt, having also never before been taught how to handle it when a military official approaches you outside your trashcan in your driveway, he just keeps blinking and maybe gives a little nod to show understanding.

Moira extends her hand to him in one fluid motion, and between her pointer and middle fingers she is offering him a business card.

“I want you to take this Jack,” Moira explains, and Jack takes it. It has her name on it, her titles (something about… _lead geneticist?_ ), and a phone number unlike any Jack’s ever seen before for the amount of numbers involved. It’s only the little phone symbol next to it that clues him in. Neatly printed in one corner of the card is some sort of circular logo Jack is unfamiliar with, and he doesn’t have time to study the card any longer because Moira is talking to him again and Jack has quickly discovered that she’s the sort of woman who commands your attention for fear of doing anything else.

“We could use someone like you in the days to come,” Moira says with what could almost be a smile. Her expression otherwise isn’t one of anger or stone-cold seriousness, rather one of pleasant ease that requires neither grin nor grit. Standing with her shoulders square and her heels together, she says: “I’ve kept an eye on you. Track star, fresh out of high school. You must be ready to think about moving on from your tiny corner of the world. We can help with that; you’ve seen yourself the progress that our other recruits have made.”

Jack panic-wonder-panics over how much Moira knows about him and Gabe but he does his best not to show it on his face. Instead he is nodding again dumbly, still holding the card she’s given him in both hands. He feels all at once that he needs to speak, needs to show that he isn’t just a backwoods Indiana teenager who can’t form words around authority, so he opens up his mouth even before he’s decided what he’s going to say and comes out with: “Understood.”

At this Moira smiles, actually _really_ smiles, and he’s not sure how the smile makes him feel – not sure how _any of this_ makes him feel, Jack realizes, glancing up at his house where his grandparents are surely still waiting on him to return from this simple chore. The crickets and the frogs are in competition with the roar of Jack’s own rushing anxiety tonight.

As if reading his mind, Moira says: “I’ll let you get back to your grandparents. I’m sure they’re waiting on you.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

And Moira O’Deorain who has been watching him much longer than Jack realizes, she tells him: “One more thing,” and she pulls a familiar looking pack of cigarettes from her pocket and hands it to Jack so fast he nearly drops it before getting a chance to realize what it is.

“Reyes asked me to give those to you. He said they were yours.” She sniffs a little, dismissively almost, and adds, “I won’t tell your folks, but those things will ruin your lungs, track star. Don’t. I want those lungs.”

Jack, who is too dazed by these new objects to notice what she’s said, isn’t even looking at her face when she says, “I’ll be expecting your call.” And then she’s gone, gone like almost without-a-sound just-up-and-disappeared gone, but if he looks hard into the oncoming darkness he can see her silhouette against the horizon getting smaller all the time.

On his own again Jack stutters back into action; all at once he pockets the business card and turns his attention to the pack of cigarettes which are suspiciously light. He fumbles to open it, having never opened one before and doing it with twitchingly anxious fingers. Inside he finds the following: a single clove cigarette, undisturbed and pristine, and a folded note about three fingers long that has him smiling all night and into the morning of the next day.

Later, beneath his bedroom window with the cool night air pouring in to push out the sticky heat of the day, Jack puts Moira’s card face up on his desk. The clove cigarette he saves, intending never to smoke it of course but merely for the comforting smell he saves it in his bedside table and still in the pack, buried beneath some socks. He hides Gabe’s note beneath his mattress where he can pull it out and read it as many times as he wants to.

Jack Morrison is eighteen on a summer night in Indiana. It is July fifth and someone somewhere outside his window is setting off more fireworks that go screeching sizzling into the night sky and Jack, patriot that he is, feels his heart skip a beat with every one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE DONE IT. YAY. I thought it would be a fun twist to make the leader be Moira since this is an AU and I can do what I waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaant. Also I thought it would be fun to have Moira recruit Gabe/Jack rather than Gabe having recruited Moira as it is in canon and all that biz. Mostly I wanted Moira to say "I want those lungs" to Jack about Jack's own lungs lmfao i'm not even sorry. ANYWAY there ya have it folks. Thanks for sticking around for the ride. You are all amazing and I appreciate every comment and every kudos left for this project. <3 <3 <3 I hope you enjoy'd :^)


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